


Wolf Heart

by mrhiddles



Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gangsters, Alternate Universe - Mob, Alternate Universe - Spy, F/M, Hipsters, Travel, peacoats and guns kind of fic, shit like that
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-21
Updated: 2013-03-21
Packaged: 2017-12-06 00:18:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/729522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrhiddles/pseuds/mrhiddles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The funeral was closed casket. The last time Jane saw Thor alive, he had spoken of Russia.</p><p>Loki showed up at her door a month later, telling her Thor was still alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wolf Heart

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting in my folder for over half a year and I finally finished the first chapter. Sit down and grab some tea because it's going to be a long Spy Lokane AU.
> 
> Will be a multichap. Lokane is the dominant ship. All Thane is pretty much past-tense.

" _Spare me your judgments, spare me your dreams."_  


_Mumford and Sons - Thistle and Weeds_

\--

The second time she saw him was the day of their wedding.

Thor had worn a black suit with white trim, a square of red poking out of his pocket to reflect in the sunlight. Jane had teased him about the tie holding back the bulk of his hair, and really all she wanted was for him to show it off. He had wrinkled his nose and refused. _That's for later_ , he'd said, pressing smiling lips to the bend of her neck.

She'd smiled a private smile, turning away from him to cast bright eyes across the guests attending. Thor leaned in once more to place an easy kiss against her neck, and that's when she saw him.

Loki stood across the minor sea of people, near the drinks, dressed in slate black with a green scarf. She'd seen pictures of Thor's brother but had never actually met him, not officially at least.

There had been one time, the first time, when she'd met Thor's parents. Loki had walked by, not sparing anyone in the room a single look. He'd had long hair and an apple in his hand, nearly jogging past them. Like he couldn't wait to get out. Thor had tried to introduce them. Loki had ignored her. Thor had grumbled apologies to her, but she wasn't that bothered by it. No one had a perfect family. And what with Thor's choice of career, well, she could see how it would strain them all.

She hadn't thought much about him since then, if she were to be honest with herself.

Presently, she saw he'd cut his hair, but his eyes looked sunken, a bit deranged. She wondered at it.

But right now he was only staring at her and Jane couldn't say what made her suddenly shiver.

Within an hour, after they'd cut the cake, she saw Thor looking around, asked him what was wrong.

Thor's brow had creased and said his brother had left.

After, whenever the topic of Loki was approached, even hedged at, Thor would frown and grow so silent she had first thought he'd been angry at her. But she knew, after a while. Jane knew that somewhere deep within Thor was a piece of him that had never forgiven his brother for that.

\--

Sometimes they say magic works itself through the air. That if you stand still and just breathe, you can feel it raise the hair along your arms, your neck. If you stay silent and listen, bare your tongue to the taste of it…

They speak of magic like it is an easy thing.

\--

Her work required long stints from home, but then again so did Thor's. Jane could hardly remember the last time she'd woken to Thor beside her, those blue eyes just watching her like sapphire jewels. Lines would form around his eyes when he smiled and she loved that. It was so easy to smile around Thor.

But she didn't smile that much, when she woke up alone, or at her office. Too many nights she'd sleep with her arms sprawled across star charts and too many days saw Thor flying across continents, trying so, so very hard to spread peace.

Military security, a specific title of a major corporation, and a few hundred thousand dollars a year. That is what Thor's job was. Jane wasn't permitted to know much past the fact the corporation was called Strategic Homeland….something, something. She never remembered the full title, they were changing it all the time. And so, like everyone else, she just called it SHIELD.

She was searching for galaxies while Thor was fighting wars all the many ways he knew how. That was their lives. Their legacy.

Some days she felt yearning towards a little more. They called each other all the time, sure, but that didn't equate to the time she wanted to spend _with_ him. They'd been married a little over a year and had seen each other a total of what she calculated was about three or four months.

She placed a hand on her stomach, imagining, again.

But Jane didn't waste her time on the what ifs, the ones she _knew_ would never happen.

\--

On those rare, rainy, stormy days when they both didn't have work, Jane would clutch at Thor, legs urging him nearer. His hands wound in her hair and he kissed at her neck. They would lie together after, sometimes watching a movie or she would make some soup. She found Thor had a preference for tomato and would deliberately throw one at him to get a reaction from him. It ended between the sheets and another movie.

They would lie together and talk for hours. Make up for the time they'd lost spent apart.

Those were her favorite days.

\--

On sunny days he would take her to fairs. They would tour the markets and the homely little booths of handcrafted valuables. She had a welded iron tree with hand carved wooden stars for the leaves Thor had bought her. One of her most treasured items.

Thor traveled and as it happened was presented with plenty of random items, tickets and even food from wherever he was visiting. He once surprised her with a trip to the Kentucky derby. Neither of them had been or had particularly thought of going before but decided what the hell, and so they went. Jane had never felt so much thunderous excitement.

The last time they'd seen each other he'd asked her away to Russia. She'd never thought about Russia before, past various researchers she'd admired like Doroshkevich, Dubyago, and Ziegel to name a few. But she'd agreed readily, without even thinking. It was fun, in a way, living with the surprise of not knowing.

He'd kissed her and then was on a plane to Europe three hours after she'd said yes, hair still tangled and skin still radiating with heat.

But that was all before, and she didn't think she'd see many rainy or sunny days with Thor for a very long time.

\--

The first time she spoke to him was in her own home.

Thor and she had an apartment together, furniture shifted against walls haphazardly with clothes and books and various lab equipment thrown throughout. Thor had always had the stray box of poptarts lying around, and she didn't have the heart to clean them up until he returned from his business. To change anything when he was gone would be to shatter the reality she'd carefully crafted; pretending he was still here, his presence trapped in the objects around their home. The only things she regularly checked up on, made sure were safe, was the StarkTech airlocked weapons case that Thor kept a few precious items sealed away in. He took most when he left, but he always left one or things. For her. If anything went bad. That, and her own equipment she kept organized. It wouldn't do to lose half her research due to disorganized housekeeping.

She had been going through a box of lab slides she'd kept at home when there was a knock on her door. She'd expected more, maybe a surprise delivery from Thor? But there was only one. She knew it wasn't Thor because he didn't knock.

Jane opened the door and met the green eyes of Loki.

It happened so fast.

"My brother was shot."

A heartbeat where all she could do was stare at him, but he did not look away like she expected him to. They were strangers. They shouldn't have been staring at each other like that, right? Like the world had just broken apart and opened underneath them.

The phone rang from inside. Loki flinched.

She knew.

In that moment, Jane wanted to cry and to scream and to be held, by Thor, by her parents, by Darcy or Erik, _anyone_. She looked at Loki and nearly went to him, but she held herself back. Not him. Jane wanted to be alone. This, this wasn't something to be shared.

She saw in his swollen, reddened eyes and the tension of his jaw that he had already thought all that and still, he'd come to tell her first. The phone rang and rang. That need for solitude crept through her, and this time tears did slip down her face, but she made no sound. His eerily green eyes swept back and forth once, twice between hers and then he was rubbing the thumb of one hand into the palm of his other.

_Ring…ring…ring…_

The line cut. The muscle of Loki's jaw twitched and she thought he was about to say something but instead he remained jarringly still and silent. He should be wanting to scream and tear things apart, like she wanted. Was he not feeling that?

"Why?" she choked out, finally.

"Something went wrong. Why do you think?" he snapped.

Jane wanted to glare at him but felt no will for it, and anyway he wasn't looking at her. He looked to the side now, out towards the sky. It was beginning to snow.

They had married in winter.

\--

They buried him in a closed casket a half month later. Many had come. Shadows moved in the mass of SHIELD agents, one head of bright red hair and the grim, shaded visage of Natasha and Clint shuffling through, moving without moving, a presence of such…governmental authority at such an intimate, painful event—it rubbed Jane the wrong way, but they were Thor's friends, his coworkers…they had as much a right to be here as anyone. Tony drank, dark eyes curiously wet, Bruce looked ready to weep, Steve saluted him after a speech she couldn't dare replicate. Apart from them stood Fandral, Hogun, Volstagg and Sif, who was holding the crook of Fandral's arm. Fandral had cried. Then there was Loki, and...well.

Germany hadn't released the body until they were certain on terms of negotiation with SHIELD that Jane had no part in. Two weeks without seeing Thor, longer still because of the closed casket. They hadn't let her see the body. Two weeks, and they'd have been in Russia, where it was snowing fresh and white and dangerous.

The way it snowed here was stale, familiar, and too sad to bear, thick and cold with memories that stung like fresh wounds, still open and bare to the freezing wind.

Loki had stood the entire service, never once looking away from where his brother now lay. The green of the scarf about his shoulders was the same she'd seen before, so long ago, only now it hung limp and caustic and bright in a world of grey and black and shade. And white.

White covered everything.

Fresh snow fell on Thor's casket, a smudge of assaulting green just hovering on the skirts of her vision.

\--

" _You need some time outside, hun."_

"No, I don't. I need to work, so I'll call you tomorrow."

" _Oh, no you don't. Jane, I am not hanging up this phone without making you promise me you will come out tonight."_

"Darcy, please. Please."

Silence.

" _I'm sorry, Jane. I'm so sorry."_

"I know."

\--

Erik had been over with Fury earlier that week.

Jane wanted to know what happened to Thor, what really happened. Thor wasn't weak enough to just be shot, and…end. He didn't feel gone, so why should he have to be?

She watched them hold their mugs of coffee, coffee she'd made, and noticed how neither drank from their mugs. Hers sat cold and ignored on the table in front of her.

"Thor worked security for us, yes. But he did more for us than most dared to. I've only seen a couple agents match his caliber. He always is—was in the field, at least most of the time. You know Tony, he worked with him too, that crazy technology of his…"

Fury went on and on but all Jane could think was that he had lied to her.

Thor had lied.

\--

The first time they'd fought, Loki had knocked on her door until his knuckles were red.

He breezed past her into her living room, hands deep inside the pockets of a long ashen coat. His hair and shoulders were wet from melting snow, and his eyes were large and for once, not appraising. Not like the other times.

"He's alive."

Jane hit him. Loki moved with it, jaw jutted and mouth hanging open with eyes staring out ahead like he couldn't quite believe it. Not like it had hurt. Not like she had wanted it to. And then she'd turned, knuckles aching, gone to their—her fridge and opened the freezer. Loki barely caught the bag of frozen peas as they hit his chest.

"You think I'm lying," he bit out as she passed by him again.

Jane walked to her couch and sat down, legs drawn to her chest, trying to ignore the way her heart battered painfully fast in her chest. Hope. Just a flare and _oh_ , how it hurt.

"It's what you do, isn't it?"

"Is that what he told you?" She heard the crunch of the bag shift and knew he was pressing it to his jaw. "You would be surprised at who tells the better lie."

Jane bit her tongue until it hurt, keeping herself from saying anything in reply. Forced out the flickering thought that yes, Thor had lied to her before, about his job. But this was Loki, not Fury. She'd had enough encounters with Thor's brother to know she didn't particularly like him, so why should she entertain him and his delusions?

"Get out."

"Jane—"

"Get the hell out of my house," she said, very slowly. Brown eyes slid to green where she turned her head to glare at him.

Loki shut his mouth.

"First you come here to tell me Thor was shot, and now you tell me he's still alive? That I didn't bury my husband?"

"You didn't."

Jane threw a pillow at him, the closest thing. Loki didn't move, but his eyes went flat, and he stared. Jane stood and turned to face him.

"The casket wasn't my choice. They—"

"SHIELD has been lying to you. Just like they've been lying to me." And there was contempt there, in the clench of his jaw, the errant jerk of his hand. He pressed the peas tighter against his face. And his eyes _burned_.

Jane felt her eyes ache, twitch, the burn of wanting to cry but the pride of keeping it together because she would never let Loki see. She knew enough of the brother-in-law who had never been there to know she didn't want to let him witness her vulnerability. Not with this.

But then, Thor had been his brother. No matter what happened between them in the past, she didn't know, she couldn't care. They had been family. Loki's insistence on the matter told her that she should at least listen. Even if it hurt.

Her chest thumped in time with her pulse and the heaviness of it matched the flat color of Loki's eyes. She wondered if he felt it too.

"Why are you here, Loki? Why do this?"

"Because it's Thor." _Because he's my brother_ , was what his eyes said. Jane felt her heart stutter and she breathed out shakily, running a hand through her loose hair.

"It's been a month since the funeral. Why now?" A part of her wanted to believe it, but another wanted it to be a lie. To know he'd been alive, for an entire month, when the world thought him dead…

"I only just tracked down the information he's been moved."

The breath she huffed was quicker, annoyed. She met his eyes again, determined not to give in to the baser desire in her to entertain him his story.

But Loki dug quickly into his jacket, free hand going to the pocket across from him to roughly pull out an envelope. There was no stamp or writing and it was unsealed.

"Please," he bit out. And he raised it, holding it out for her.

"Loki—"

"Please," he repeated, voice hard and eyes vicious against the light. He lowered the bag of peas to his side and Jane could see the start of a bruise flower along his jaw.

She saw that his knuckles were red from knocking. Maybe from something else. The pain of it, he seemed frozen against it. From all of it.

Jane crossed to him and took the envelope.


End file.
